Author's Note: It has come to my attention that I use "Jean" and "Jeanne" alternatively when referring to Jake's mom. This is because "Jean", in my cozy little world, has always exclusively been a boy's name, and Jeanne seems to me to be the appropriate female version. The actual name is only used once in the series, in Animorphs #50, and by that 'canon', Jean is apparently the correct name. I will, henceforth, use the name Jean exclusively, and eventually I'll go back and fix it and take out this note. Also, please note for continuity purposes, at this chapter we are still in the gap between Animorphs #52 and #53.
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"My name is Orkath One-Seven-Two of the Hett Simplatt pool," I declared aloud, making Jean's voice sound as commanding as I could. "I am in command of Yeerk forces in this area, and I speak for the Yeerk Empire." Behind me, the policeman and another human-controller, a teenage girl in a grocery clerks uniform, held up makeshift white flags of truce that had been hastily put together from broomsticks, duct tape and rolls of toilet paper. It was my hope that this very human tradition of parley would appeal to whatever military commander was running the show within their encampment. Four Hork-Bajir warriors with Dracon beams stood ready in case I was wrong.
Similarly, about a dozen human soldiers with M16s had their weapons trained on our contingent, but none fired. They were deferring to a tough-looking brunette woman in her early thirties with a blue naval uniform and captains' bars, flanked by two green-fatigued army sergeants. One held a pistol while the other, amusingly enough, held a legal pad on a clipboard. Glancing around at the defensive troops, I added, "I am here under flag of truce and my men do not have their weapons raised. I would appreciate the same courtesy."
The woman hesitated only a moment before sticking her arm out and bobbing her open hand up and down. The soldiers understood the signal and, with one exception, lowered their weapons. The sergeant with the pistol turned his attention, and his gun, towards this single disobedient troop. "Lower your weapon, private, that was an order."
The troop was keeping her eyes moving between the woman in the navy blue and the Hork-Bajir. "But sir," the troop replied, "what if she's one of them?" There was an edge of panic in her voice. "What if we're being led into a trap? We have t-" She didn't get a chance to finish her sentence, as the soldier to her left delivered a hard right cross to her face and the solider to her right grabbed her M16 and pulled it away.
"There seems to be some dissension in your ranks, human," the policeman commented. He seemed about to say more, but an icy glare from me shut him up. This was definitely not the time for provocations.
"No dissention that you didn't put there, slug," the navy woman replied. She fixed her gaze on me. "What is it you want from us?" she asked curiously.
I held my hands apart in a gesture of non-violence. "It is my understanding that you are quarantining a good number of your men for three days in order to weed us out."
The woman nodded, producing a false smile. "That is the general idea, yes."
It felt weird to speak as though I were really a Yeerk, to be negotiating on the 'wrong' side of this conflict. But then, just about everything about the conflict was weird, from a human perspective. "You are aware that my people will die in the process?"
The woman smiled more genuinely. "You're welcome to try to rescue them, but I wouldn't advise it." She gestured towards the ruins of downtown, her voice taking on a passionate edge. "This was my home, Yeerk. That may be a concept you don't understand. Home. But it's important to humans, the concept of home, and believe me when I say that your people will pay for what you've done to mine."
I tried to ignore the indignation in her tone, and the empathy I felt for her. It was my home, too, I thought, but I didn't let the grief show in my voice. I kept my tone even and as neutral as possible. "What is your name, human?"
"Captain Margaret Haddix," the woman replied indignantly, "of the United States Navy."
I gestured behind the woman, towards the camps and tents where barely a hundred soldiers were trying to keep pace with over a thousand civilian refugees. "Captain, any of my people who are in there are prisoners of war. Your human society has rules regarding the treatment of such prisoners – 'Geneva Convention', I believe it's called?"
The Captain seemed surprised at that assertion, and her reply was far more diplomatic. "As far as I know, your people are not signatories to the convention, Orkath. I doubt you've been here for /that/ long."
"You're right, we haven't," I replied, letting some amusement slip into my tone. "But we were led to believe that your people held such a principle dear to them. 'Sanctity of life' and such."
"Actually, I believe the phrase we usually use is 'sanctity of human life'." She cast a sideways glance at one of her aides, and then looked back at me. "Again I ask, what do you want from us?"
"A prisoner exchange," I proposed. I gestured at the unconscious woman on the ground. "You, obviously, need more people whom you know are not Controllers, and you need them before the three day limit is up. I need to ensure that even more Yeerks do not die senselessly. Both goals can be accomplished by simply allowing me to address the people you're quarantining. Allow me to order the Yeerks out of their host bodies and take them with me."
Captain Haddix raised a brow. "And the prisoner whose voice you're using to speak to me right now?" she asked pointedly.
"What makes you assume I'm a prisoner?" I heard Jean's mouth say, a statement which must have seemed quite at odds with the look of surprise I involuntarily twisted her face into. I hadn't been attempting to control or monitor Jean, and her sudden outburst surprised me. My Yeerk morph's instinct was to clamp down hard on her, focus more on keeping control over the host body, and I'm shamed to admit that at first, I followed that instinct blindly, preventing her from speaking further.
«Hey, what are you doing?» Jean demanded angrily. I ignored her, keeping my focus on the human contingent. Captain Haddix, particularly, was staring at me sagely, seemingly aware that something was going on which she could not perceive.
Either the truth didn't occur to her, or she chose to go with the simplest assumption. "I assume 'you' are a prisoner because I already know there's a slug in there talking to me," she asserted. "I doubt any human would submit to that freely."
"Would it help if I stepped out of my host for a moment, Captain?" I asked earnestly. "Then you could hear from her own mouth that there are some humans who prefer our company."
«No! What are you DOING?» Jean screamed, and with all of her willpower, she fought me for control of the body. I fought back instinctively, but I was tired and irritable and juggling far too much at once, and she succeeded in shifting our eyes to the right, fixing our gaze on the policeman Controller we'd been with earlier.
And that's when I realized my mistake. He was eyeing us warily. Very warily. He was aware that my host was Jake's mother – her capture was such a valuable victory for Visser One that he'd mad sure every Yeerk on Earth was aware of it. And he knew that she was probably the least likely human alive to be a voluntary Controller at this point. Our eyes locked with his, and the look he gave us said it all: You can't possibly know how she'd react unless you were working with her. And she wouldn't be working with you if you were acting against her son.
He cleared his throat, and suddenly I felt sure that the Hork-Bajir 'protectors' behind me were about to become my firing squad. But instead, he smiled wryly. "What Orkath means, Captain, is that while her host body doesn't enjoy infestation, she'd be sure to prefer it to the experience of yet another Yeerk dying in her head. This particular host has felt a Yeerk die within her before, and it was hardly a pleasant experience."
«You have?» I asked, surprised.
«Of course not, Chris,» Jean responded, in a rather condescending, annoyed tone of voice. «He's saving our asses. He's a member of their resistance.»
Again, Jean pushed at the mental hold I had on her, and this time, I let go and allowed her to take control. I was too much of a wreck, too sad about Chance and Eric and Orkath. I was dealing with too much for too long, and it was finally time to sit back and let someone else handle it. "We can spare your people that experience," Jean said, speaking as though she were me. Or Orkath. Or me pretending to be Orkath. Whatever. "All we have to do is order the Yeerks out now."
"But the experience is survivable," the Captain pointed out. "Since your host survived it." She shrugged. "Putting aside my considerable anger at your race, you really have nothing to bargain with, here. All you're offering is to free people who are already in my custody, already on the road to being free. And in return I lose possibly hundreds of valuable interrogation suspects, and you get the opportunity to stick your people in other host bodies you've undoubtedly captured, increasing your fighting force." She shook her head, smiling. "No, if it's just the lives of your people that you're concerned with, why don't you supply us with a way to feed them ourselves? Your people get to live, our people get spared this supposedly horrible experience of having them die while connected, and we get to retain our prisoners until a more equitable solution can be reached."
"That's not possible, for technical reasons," Jean admitted. "There's only one food source on this planet right now."
I was barely paying attention. I was sobbing in the back of Jean's head, thinking about all that I had lost. But the admission got the Captain's attention, and the Controller policeman's, in a big way. "Y'know," the Captain said, "you're not the best negotiator, Orkath. Telling your enemy about a tactical weakness like that is definitely not a smart move." With that, she snapped her fingers, and the remaining nine human guards lifted their weapons again. "Where is that food source, exactly?"
I could sense that Jean was about to tell her. «What're you doing?» I asked, the rapidly changing situation snapping me out of my depressed stupor. I searched Jean's recent thoughts for an explanation, and found the truth – she didn't really appreciate the fact that some Yeerks were worth saving, nor was she interested in negotiating a co-existence. She acknowledged it, but considered their sacrifice a small price to pay to ensure that her son – and the rest of humanity – was kept safe from their race as a whole.
It wasn't really until that moment that I realized how badly I /did/ want to make peace with the Yeerks. How badly I wanted to ensure that Orkath, who had died as my friend, would not have all of the trust and friendship that we'd built between us in his last days used as the catalyst to genocide of his entire race.
And so I clamped down. Hard. And I said the words that I knew Orkath would have said, had he been here. "We came to you under flag of truce, Captain. Surely your species is not so dishonorable as to violate that for the sake of a brief tactical advantage? Because if you are, then clearly my kind is quite justified in taking such decisions out of your hands." With that I, too, snapped my fingers, and the Hork-Bajir also raised their weapons threateningly.
The tension was so thick that there was barely room to breathe. Jean was screaming at me, in my head, but I didn't care. For that single moment, I was a Yeerk, completely ambivalent to this shell human host that had nearly sealed the fate of the Yeerk race. The Captain stared at me long and hard, seemingly glaring through Jean's eyes to glimpse the real me, the intelligence behind the voice. And I could see that she did not doubt I would give the order to fire, if provoked.
"Very well," the Captain acknowledged, again signaling her troops to stand down. "Then you may leave in peace, as you came. Know that we do not wish to starve your people, but the desire to spare their lives is futile without the ability to do so without losing custody of them." She leaned in close, her voice once again taking on it's hard edge. "And rest assured that we'll be speaking again soon, once the remaining survivors in this pit of yours have been seen to." She turned on her heels and started back towards her camp, her people following in tow. Letting out a sigh, I turned in the other direction, leading my own contingent back towards the shopping center.
"That… could have gone better," I admitted. And then, finally, I turned my attention to my belligerent host. «I can't believe you were contemptible enough to try that.»
«And I can't believe,» Jean spat back, radiating hatred in our emotional link, «that you could treat me the way they do, after you've been through it yourself. I was trying to save humanity. Remember humanity? The species you're supposed to be a part of?»
«I don't want to be part of a species that can't abide by basic rules of decency,» I countered. «Orkath was right about us. We cross lines that shouldn't be crossed, even during wartime.»
«You'd know all about crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed, wouldn't you, Chris?» Jean ranted. She tried to leave the comment veiled, but I had all the control over her that a Yeerk would have, and I could hear the term being bandied about in her head. Queer. Even unsaid, it stung.
«I didn't think you had a problem with my… with who I was,» I noted, trying to sound casual about it and failing miserably. I'm sure I sounded every bit like the hurt child I was. «Or the Yeerks, for that matter. You said my Yeerk sounded nice for supporting me. And you felt something for your own Yeerk.»
«I don't have a problem with you, Chris,» Jean insisted. «Or at least I didn't. And it was nice that your Yeerk was supportive of you, and that mine had such meager ambitions. That doesn't mean I condone what you – or they – do. They should be suppressing their urges to control people, respectful of other peoples' free will. And by the same token you should be rising above your instincts, not letting them shackle you into an unnatural lifestyle, one that puts your health at risk and guarantees you'll never experience a truly committed, loving relationship.»
To say the least, her viewpoint pissed me off to no end. «Think what you want about me, but you're not going on a vendetta against the entire Yeerk race, not when there's so many of them trying to help us. Not while I'm in your head.»
«You can't stay in my head forever,» Jean taunted. «You've got what, fourty-five minutes left in morph?»
«I don't have to morph back,» I threatened, unsure myself whether or not I was sincere about it.
Jean scoffed. «I guess that makes it pretty clear where your allegiance is, doesn't it.»
I was about to respond, when I suddenly realized that the other Yeerks in my contingent weren't with me anymore. I had been so distracted by the fight with Jean that I hadn't really been paying attention to the world around me.
"Hello?" I asked, calling out. We were still nearly two blocks from the grocery store, the large ingress of the Yeerk pool still everpresent on our right. I glanced downward at the rock and rubble. «Could they have fallen in?» Jean wondered, mostly to herself.
Suddenly, a large hole burrowed underneath me, and I found myself falling! Ten, twenty, thirty feet I fell, the tunnel arced at a forty-five degree angle so that I kept hitting the dirt on my way down. When I landed, I found myself in a small natural cavern, maybe forty feet in diameter. The stench of a slaughterhouse instantly wafted in my direction, such that I couldn't stop Jean's body from wretching at the scent.
"Well hi there," a familiar voice greeted, startling me. From four different crevices, two Hork-Bajir warriors emerged with Dracon beam weapons, followed by the two best sights I'd ever laid eyes on.
Eric and Chance.
Eric leveled a Dracon beam on me. "You haven't seen a Kandrona around here lately, have you, Sub-Visser?"